Marketing Land » Jim Yuhttp://marketingland.com
Marketing LandTue, 03 Mar 2015 22:09:47 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.3Why The Quality Of Your Data Is Crucial For Content Marketing In 2015http://marketingland.com/quality-data-crucial-content-marketing-2015-117217
http://marketingland.com/quality-data-crucial-content-marketing-2015-117217#commentsTue, 10 Feb 2015 13:55:38 +0000http://marketingland.com/?p=117217Columnist Jim Yu of BrightEdge argues that with all the data available to us today, marketers should no longer be guessing at what works based on gut instinct.

Do you know what content your target audience wants to read — and where they want to read it? If the answer is no, you’re not obtaining enough of the right kind of data.

Faced with loads of data, the modern marketer simply does not have time to sift through it all — the hundreds of potential metrics, the trends in content, and the changes to search algorithms — in order to stitch together a story that illustrates what their brand’s audience really needs.

The key is obtaining the right data without putting in exorbitant amount of time to do so. Let’s examine this issue a bit more closely.

Obtaining The Right Kind Of Data

Data from Cisco predicts that in North America alone, IP traffic will reach 40.5 Exabytes per month in 2018, up from 16.6 Exabytes per month in 2013. That’s a lot of data to contend with.

Sometimes, mounds of data lead brands to have analysis paralysis, which tends to make marketers approach data half-heartedly in one of the following ways:

They don’t really gather data at all, instead making decisions based on experience and “gut” feelings. In fact, about 20 percent of companies surveyed by CMOSurvey.org in 2014 said they relied on manager judgment to measure marketing ROI.

They stitch together a toolkit of multiple analytics providers, each measuring a different aspect of the marketing program, without integrating the data points together to see the whole picture.

They use a good analytics platform, but they don’t configure it to meet their unique needs — or they rarely touch it because it’s too intimidating to learn a new piece of software.

Out of those three approaches, the most crippling is most likely No. 2: relying on fragmented data.

One of the most efficient ways to deal with big data in our marketing programs is to allow the machines to pull it all in from multiple sources (all the channels and media that matter to your content), make sense of it for you, and output it in a language a marketer can understand and act upon.

The right analytics platform should not only be able to integrate multiple data points, but also should make recommendations via machine learning, offering predictions for your next move based on learning from previous data. In short, the platform is making decisions versus just following instructions.

This type of data is crucial for those who want to lead in content marketing in 2015 — especially on the organic search side, where it’s a zero sum game. So, consider evaluating the quality of your analytics this year.

If you haven’t done this previously, you’re not alone. In fact, 67 percent of executives surveyed by CMOSurvey.org in 2014 said their company did not formally evaluate the quality of their marketing analytics.

And what that research is really telling us is that it’s certainly not too late to get a leg up on the competition with the right data.

Understanding The Demand For Content

Today, content marketing succeeds through a balance of the old and new — the old method of relying on experience and wisdom coupled with the new methods of data collection.

Rather than relying solely on a basic understanding of your audience, data exist today that tell us not only what topics are driving demand, but which content types are the highest performing, what has historically worked, what topics are trending in real-time, and how you stack up against your competition’s content.

These data are creating a shift in the industry to move companies simply from content marketing to content performance marketing.

Once we obtain this data, we can begin to map the content type and message to the individual, rather than the old say-and-spray method where the communication serves as a catch-all for every important segment of your audience.

The following infographic from Traackr reminds us that there are a multitude of potential personas we market to (and this segment, the influencers, only represents one side of a vast audience brands must communicate with):

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

Take note: Personalized marketing is not going away. As data algorithms in search engines, social media platforms, and email marketing platforms continue to evolve to offer the most relevant experience for every person they touch, so must brands with their communications.

But, take comfort in knowing that even the leading brands still struggle with delivering personalized content, and a majority of them cite the lack of data integration as the reason why.

Knowing The Impact In 2015

When you make quality data a priority, you gain insights beyond the face value of what your gut is telling you, or what trends are occurring in content, or even the potential impact that any given search algorithm has on your content’s ability to perform on the Web.

Shooting in the dark can only work for so long. Frankly, with the options we have today for uncovering meaningful data, there’s no reason any leading brand should have to guess at what’s working anymore.

So in 2015, make meaningful data a priority, so your content is more meaningful in the eyes of your target audience.

Any marketer’s goal is to reach the right decision-maker with the right message at the right time.

If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) marketer, these decision-makers are usually part of the C-suite, and they have a very specific set of needs that you’ll have to address through content, and through certain types of content.

In this post, we’ll discuss what your decision-makers want in the content your brand produces and the unique challenges that B2B marketers face when tackling content marketing.

Start Providing Content Substance

A survey by The Economist Group, which measured the opinions of 500 business executives and 500 marketers globally, uncovered a key insight: marketers are typically marketing without substance.

While marketers believe they are answering the demand for content, they may not be answering the demand for information. So, what type of information is your target audience seeking?

Survey findings showed that the most useful types of information to decision-making executives included:

The industry outlook on a matter

Both sides of a complicated issue

An area of business they weren’t previously apprised of

However, marketers are focusing on their own agendas, and 75 percent include mentions of products and services as part of their content strategy, while 93 percent connect content directly to a product or service.

Unfortunately, this puts the spotlight on the brand and not on the audience where it belongs. This is the audience whose problems the brand needs to solve. And even if part of the answer is a brand’s product or service, the focus should always be to add value to the conversation.

In fact, 71 percent of executives surveyed said content does not make a positive impression when it feels like a sales pitch. On the other hand, execs said meaningful brand perceptions existed when content was timely or unique, and when it helped them to understand a complex issue in simple terms.

If you’re in the camp of people who believe that a content strategy can make or break a brand, you’re not alone.

The Hurdles B2B Marketers Face With Content

It seems the problem is clear: marketers aren’t creating content that resonates. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s latest research on B2B content marketing, the number-one challenge marketers cite today when it comes to content is creating engaging content.

So in 2015, perhaps it’s time to look at the gap between what your decision-makers want in your content and what you’re actually producing. And maybe it’s also time to take a step back from trying to feed the content beast by looking at quality versus quantity.

Another good reason for this is maintaining the longevity of your website and its ability to compete. Keep in mind that when it comes to producing content online in the form of Web content — like your blog or the main pages on your site — everything you do is not only subject to scrutiny from your target audience, but also Google.

That means when you sacrifice quality in your content – when you don’t put the user first — you could not only be alienating your target audience but also be subject to ranking penalties in search engines.

Form Matters: When Content For Content’s Sake Isn’t Good Enough

It’s not just what you say that makes an impact, but how you say it – meaning what form it takes. Going back to The Economist Group survey, data show that the content format matters to your target persona, the executive.

When executives were asked which forms of content were the most helpful for a business-related matter:

Seventy-one percent (71%) said articles

Fifty-one percent (51%) said research reports

Twenty-seven percent (27%) said briefing papers

Nineteen percent (19%) said newsletters

Eight percent (8%) said events

In addition, 85 percent preferred text content to video or audio, and 78 percent used their laptop or desktop computer to view content most frequently.

Giving your target audience what they want, both in terms of the information provided and the format in which it’s presented, helps solve the equation of producing engaging content. To help map out your own path for creating engaging content as a B2B in 2015, take a good, hard look at:

The executive persona – specifically, what level of knowledge they have around the issues you can help solve. This helps you decide what information you present in the content you create.

The ways in which you can deliver the solution to that executive persona so it fits into their lifestyle. Do they read online? Via print? Do they prefer audio on-the-go or an in-depth article or research report?

The Content Measurement Imperative

You are spending time and money on content, so you want to see leads, right? Of course – in fact, that’s what 70 percent of marketers surveyed in The Economist Group’s research said.

However, those same marketers cited branding as the primary reason for creating content. Similarly, Content Marketing Institute’s research showed that 84 percent of marketers said brand awareness was the goal for content marketing, while 83 percent cited lead generation.

As marketers, can we agree that a positive perception of a company as a leader in its space can eventually lead to a sale? Can you reconcile the actions of a company making itself the best option by providing value to the target customer with the eventual close of a deal?

If so, you can begin to shift your perception of content creation in a way that puts the target audience first in your communications, knowing that the benefits will follow – whether that benefit is simply to make a positive brand impression by aiding your prospect in solving a problem, or to turn that prospect into new customer.

]]>http://marketingland.com/b2b-content-marketers-market-content-focus-value-113425/feed0The New Year & The New CMO: 3 Key Predictions For 2015http://marketingland.com/new-year-new-cmo-3-key-predictions-2015-110634
http://marketingland.com/new-year-new-cmo-3-key-predictions-2015-110634#commentsTue, 16 Dec 2014 14:00:38 +0000http://marketingland.com/?p=110634Digital marketing is always evolving, and that means CMOs have to evolve as well. Columnist Jim Yu shares his predictions for what CMOs will need to focus on in the new year.

Chief marketing officers have no doubt earned their ranks, and they have a big job to do for their brands. Not only must they bring their skills and experience to 2015, they must also be ready and willing to embrace change in order to stay a step ahead of the competition.

In this post, I’ll share three predictions that CMOs should prepare for in the coming year, which include:

Marketing analytics and ROI will be the CMO “source of truth” for continued content marketing investment

Organic search and content will continue to be the channels to watch

Scaling your marketing will require new CMO skills

Prediction #1: Marketing Analytics & ROI As The CMO Source Of Truth

It’s estimated that by 2017, 12 percent of the marketing budget will be allocated to marketing analytics. That’s a 75 percent increase from 2014, according to CMOSurvey.org, which collects data from U.S. marketers at the VP level or above at Fortune 1000 and Forbes Top 200 companies.

The fact that a growing portion of budget will be rationed to analytics shows that CMOs understand the importance of data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, “big data” without actionable insights continues to be the challenge.

The research at CMOSurvey.org shows that marketing analytics is falling flat for many and only somewhat contributes to a company’s performance across the board. That’s likely because 67 percent said they don’t formally evaluate the quality of their marketing analytics, and only 33 percent say they can prove the long-term impact of marketing quantitatively.

Right now, there’s a startling gap in how big brands are measuring marketing ROI, with 20 percent saying they don’t at all, and the next biggest percentage (21 percent) relying on customer surveys:

So, how will you handle “big data” and the return on investment in your marketing analytics in 2015?

Below are a couple of tips:

Evaluate The Analytics Software To Ensure It’s A True Platform

With big data, the problem is often fragmented data points from multiple tools, with people being in the middle of trying to reconcile that data.

When you use the right platform for marketing analytics, it should integrate and process important data from multiple places, standardize the data into a simple format, and output insights gleaned from processing all that information together.

Create Manageable And Practical Key Performance Indicators

With all the data available at our fingertips, it’s easy to want to follow everything to its end. But this approach is inefficient, producing endless “rabbit holes.” Instead, track only the handful of KPIs that matter to the unique marketing strategy and exclude everything else.

Prediction #2: Organic Search & Content Continue To Be The Channels To Watch

Back in August, I highlighted data that showed organic search was the largest driver of traffic to B2B and B2C websites, according to data forged by BrightEdge’s massive data repository, the Data Cube, earlier this year.

We also found that most of the sectors studied experienced the most return in the form of revenue from organic traffic – even over other channels like paid search, email and social.

Other studies have echoed the focus that marketers have on the organic channel. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 “B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends North America” report showed 81 percent of marketers created content on their website as their “content marketing” weapon of choice, and 80 percent used blogs – both strategies that fuel organic search performance.

But “winning” in organic search is multifaceted and goes beyond just creating articles and blogs. In order to compete in organic search, following are a few things to consider in 2015.

Make Sure You’re Catering To Your Ever-Growing Mobile Traffic

Google has suggested that having a mobile-friendly site can make or break you in the mobile search results. And, it just released its “mobile-friendly” labeling, to boot. Add to that the fact that if you do have a mobile site, Google wants important page content to render in one-second or less, and it gives plenty of tools for webmasters to identify page speed problems and issues impacting the mobile experience.

At the very head of this mobile traffic opportunity is deciding which type of mobile configuration is best for your audience; and remember, responsive is not always a one-size-fits-all approach.

Target Demand & Uphold Quality In Your Organic Content

SEO and content help one another out in tremendous ways. Through analytics data, SEO can help content creators follow the right topics that are driving demand by the target audience.

In turn, content creators help build the brand experience by providing the most useful content for that topic. One step further, SEO practices optimize the content so that it can be found for a searcher’s query on the search engine results page.

In the 2015 CMO predictions at Forbes.com, marketers say this coming year will put a tremendous focus on the customer, and that brands will further explore their ability to be publishers. Together, publishing content with a focus on the customer that’s reinforced by SEO will help brands win in organic search.

Prediction #3: Scaling Your Marketing Will Require New CMO Skills

Your digital marketing efforts support multiple business units, competing goals and are constantly under scrutiny. In fact, it might sometimes seem like scaling your marketing to support more teams and more revenue is a far-off ideological concept. You’re not alone.

CMOSurvey.org research (referenced earlier) showed only 56 percent said marketing was responsible for lead generation within their company. Add to that the fact that 62 percent say there is pressure from their boards to prove the value of marketing, and 65 percent say this is an increasing pressure, and we start to see the gap here. And that gap is the ability to scale.

Achieving this ability not only ties to the first prediction in this post – getting the right analytics in place to prove ROI, but also the second prediction – following the channels that show the most return. But in order to do this, the CMO needs to embrace his or her changing role.

In this Forbes article that highlights discussion points from the CMO Exchange conference in 2013, it points out the changing role of CMOs and what that entails. Just some of the key points discussed include:

A role change for the CMO from a marketing leader to a company-wide, change-management officer

If you want to be a change agent, and scale your marketing efforts in 2015, consider the following:

Get The Right People In Place & Learn

Don’t understand big data? Have no clue about multi-channel attribution? That’s OK for now, so long as you get the right people in place on your marketing team and start learning from them — immediately.

What if you have the right people, but lack the skills? Start ramping up those skill sets with strategic continuing education (for you and your team) and hands-on projects that allow you to fail and learn from your mistakes, or win and revel in your executions.

Right now, many believe we are facing a talent and skills gap. This article at Huffington Post shares some alarming stats, like 75 percent of marketers say lack of skills is impacting revenue, and that the U.S. could face a massive shortage (up to 190,000 people by 2018) with skills in deep data analysis.

The faster you can take this challenge head on, the faster you can secure the future of your marketing efforts and your CMO role.

Put A Priority On Relationships & Communication

You’ve probably heard this before, but the relationships you create within the organization, and the wins you can demonstrate through marketing in support of specific needs can help create buy-in for more marketing.

While every organization is unique in the way they approach marketing, today is vastly different than even five-years ago, and your organization must learn that, too. The only way to do that is through effective communication via the relationships you create with stakeholders and the ROI you can show as a result.

So in closing, you can probably see how each one of these predictions is intertwined with one another, which actually perfectly illustrates the face of digital marketing today. It’s holistic, and it needs both a sturdy foundation and the embracing of trends and new practices.

As we head into the new year, there’s no doubt that CMOs “get” just how important content is to their business, but many are still challenged with how to measure and report on its performance across the board.

Let’s take a close look at where we’re at now in terms of content as an initiative and where we need to be in 2015 to elevate our marketing to content performance.

The Growth Of Content

According to the latest research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) on B2B content marketing, 70 percent of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago – even among those who say they are least effective with it and those without any strategy guiding it.

That’s a pretty powerful statement that illustrates the affinity for content in lieu of any type of performance tracking (in fact, only 21 percent surveyed reporting being successful at tracking ROI). While it’s excellent that we’re all going after content, it’s inefficient for us to shoot in the dark.

A big part of the growth of content marketing is search and social. According to CMI, social media content was the most-used tactic among B2Bs (92 percent), while articles on a brand’s own website came in at 81 percent and blogs were used 80 percent of the time as part of the content marketing plan. (Sixty percent said blogs were the most effective.)

All of this is to say there’s no sign of us slowing content production in 2015. If you remember this infographic from 2012 on how much data is created every minute on the Web, you know just how competitive it is out there.

And with the growing amount of information on the Web, there needs to be an increased focus on how to be found and how to target demand.

The Role Of The CMO

Without a top-down commitment to measuring content performance, the extent of your content marketing strategy will be simply content creation. This can lead to everything from targeting the wrong audience to creating content no one cares about and ultimately, spending more time and money on getting it right.

In a recent article at Forbes, CMO of Limelight Networks, Kirby Wadsworth, explained the company’s commitment to content creation:

“All the pieces of content that we generate are really focused to help the customer do their job better and its part of the overall strategy of engaging the customers, not just in a “let me tell you about me” context, but “let me tell you about things that you care about that can help you succeed.”

According to Wadsworth, the company’s approach to content is fueled by research about distribution channels, and measuring and analyzing the results of content.

If there’s one thing you can resolve to do as a CMO in 2015, it’s to put processes and measurements in place for your content activities. According to data from the Aberdeen Group, companies that have well-defined content management processes outperform those that don’t in terms of website click-through rates (4.5 percent versus 3.4 percent) and conversions (5.9 percent versus 3.8 percent).

Content Performance In 2015: Three Ways To Win

As with any digital marketing initiative, you’ll need to first define the channels you’ll distribute your message within. You’ll then need to closely track those over time to gauge return.

As cited earlier, organic search and social together are powerful channels for a brand’s content. For example, did you know:

Blogging, organic search and content amplification top the list of activities that high-performing marketers are doing to generate a positive ROI (HubSpot, State of Inbound 2014-2015)

Organic search was the biggest driver of traffic and revenue for the business services sector in Q3 2014 (internal BrightEdge data)

For organic content to earn its seat at the executive table as the channel to watch, CMOs must marry data intelligence with content creation. To move from just content creation to demonstrating content performance in 2015, you need three things:

Target Demand

Optimize Content

Measure Results

1. Target Demand

You need better converting website visitors. To do that, you have to target demand using data and an understanding of your audience.

This requires both formal and informal qualitative research (defining who the customer is and what they need) as well as quantitative research (identifying analytics tools that offer data you can rely on about what your target audience is searching for online).

2. Optimize Content

No matter how smart the search engines are becoming, you need to optimize your content at the time of creation to ensure it’s being found for what your audience is searching for.

Basic on-page optimization tactics using White Hat SEO practices help communicate to the search engines what your content is about.

3. Measure Results

You need to know how effective your content is.

In order to do that, you have to set key performance indicators for each distribution channel, and ensure the analytics tools you have in place are measuring not only the KPIs that are important, but also how each channel is contributing to conversions and primary business goals.

2015 B2B Content Marketing Performance

As a CMO, you have the power to take your B2B content marketing from production to performance in 2015. Let’s make the coming year the one where we, as chief marketers, can collectively say that we understand just how our content is performing for our brand and our business goals.

Panda “4.1″ – another iteration of Google’s algorithm aimed at low-quality web content — hit on September 25, and some brands saw upward of a 90 percent loss in their organic search footprint, according to initial research conducted at BrightEdge.

In this post, we’ll go over the latest Panda iteration, and what it could mean for your website’s content strategy based on findings on which sites were impacted positively and negatively.

How Is Panda 4.1 Different Than Before?

Although Google closely guards its algorithmic secrets, here’s what we know about Panda historically, based on what Google representatives have said about it and on other data analyses shared amongst the web marketing community:

Panda targets “thin” content on sites, which often equates to a general lack of content

Panda targets duplicate content, usually when a site has a large volume of it

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.Pierre Far, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst

Could this be referring to the “softer” Panda Google spoke about back in March?

Google hasn’t opened up on the specifics, but based on initial findings from others around the web and at BrightEdge, we can share data on what types of sites have been impacted positively and negatively. Let’s do that now.

How Panda 4.1 Impacted Brands Online

Over at G-Squared Interactive, Glenn Gabe wrote about the impact Panda 4.1 had on affiliate sites, which may not come as a surprise to most – but what is a surprise, as Gabe pointed out, was that some of those sites were still standing today after all the iterations Panda had gone through in the past.

I analyzed a number of affiliate websites that got destroyed during Panda 4.1. Now, I’ve seen affiliate marketers get pummeled for a long time based on previous Panda updates, so it’s interesting that some affiliate sites that have been around for a while just got hit by Panda 4.1. Some sites I analyzed have been around since 2012 and just got hit now.

For example, there were sites with very thin content ranking for competitive keywords while their primary purpose was driving users to partner websites (like Amazon and other ecommerce sites). The landing pages only held a small paragraph up top and then listed affiliate links to Amazon (or other partner websites).

Gabe’s initial analysis highlighted some of the tactics that could have triggered Panda this time around, which included:

Affiliate sites without useful information that were essentially gateways to others sites

Content on the page was not the first thing a user encountered, rather it was a list of affiliate links first

Top organic listings that featured broken or blank pages upon clicking through

“Content farms” like sites that had a lot of how-to type articles that were weak in depth

In BrightEdge’s analysis, we saw some of these same types of tactics as patterns for what may have triggered Panda 4.1 in certain industry verticals. BrightEdge tracks a large set of data through our Data Cube technology, and we took a deep dive into a set of industry verticals to see if we could identify patterns resulting from Panda 4.1.

Keep in mind as I’m sharing this data that we’re not stating these sites intentionally did anything wrong or that they were “bad” in nature, but the importance of sharing specific examples is so that marketers can study and learn from the impact – and go make positive improvements to their own sites.

Informational Sites

One vertical that seemed to be impacted was the broad informational site. Websites with a lot of general information on a variety of topics were negatively impacted.

Would you say Answers.com and HowStuffWorks.com were content farms? Some may argue that point, but they were among the type of sites that were negatively impacted in BrightEdge’s early analysis.

With this type of site, results may vary, and the quality of the content is not always uniform. Plus, these sites have to compete against the niche content sites that are likely to answer the searcher’s query better.

And speaking of niche content, we saw sites with niche content surface favorably after Panda 4.1. Sites that focused on a specific type of content, like OrganicGardening.com, came out on top:

Some of the takeaways here (and those who have been doing web marketing for a while would say this comes as no surprise):

Sites that specialize in a theme or topic and that provide a rich-information experience for users are considered authoritative for that subject matter

Sites that spread their themes too thin and only offer a little bit of information on all topics can be deemed low quality

Local Business Sites

Panda 4.1 seemed to have an impact on the local business vertical as well. Two examples of local business websites that were impacted were both in the service industry – one that specializes in Japanese auto repair, and one that specializes in TV and appliance repair.

The site that did well – APlusJapaneseAutoRepair.com – was content-rich, and appeared to be intentionally (and heavily) optimized around specific topics:

The site that did not fare well – NortechElectronics.com – was thin in content overall:

Some of the takeaways here include:

Businesses that focus on providing a content-rich experience around the services and topics that their target audience cares about enhance the website experience. Basic on-page SEO and website structure can go a long way, too.

Even a local business that may be ahead of the game just by having a website is subject to Panda due, in part presumably, to the fact that they have very little to keep users engaged on the site (beyond basic contact information and simple trust signals).

It’s interesting to note other verticals that were impacted by Panda 4.1. You can poke around the following sites and play “quality detective” yourself, although it’s not always outright obvious the differences:

Government

FTC.gov (negatively impacted)

SEC.gov (positively impacted)

Education

EverestCollege.edu (negatively impacted)

OgleSchool.edu (positively impacted)

Education Directory

GradSchools.com (negatively impacted)

TheBestSchools.org (positively impacted)

How Panda 4.1 Changes Your Content Performance Strategy

First, algorithms do not exist in a bubble – so don’t forget that your website’s content in its entirety creates the user experience. At the end of the day, there are all sorts of signals – more than 200 –– that impact the ranking of a website.

In our analysis of sites that were impacted by Panda 4.1, we noted other things that could have been negatively impacting the user experience.

To get an understanding of what Google deems as a quality experience, check out its search quality evaluation guide (Version 1, 2012), which is used by people hired by Google to evaluate the quality of sites. This feedback is used when engineers are testing new algorithm updates, for example.

How does your site stack up against some of the criteria featured within that Google document?

To get a grip on the quality of your content and the experience your brand is creating site-wide:

Quality: Start with your most important pages – high-traffic, high-value web pages – and begin evaluating them against a set of criteria. Think about the set of criteria that Panda uses to evaluate sites (what we do know) along with the set of criteria that comes up often in the Google search quality guide.

User Experience: Prioritize the content development and user experience improvements needed (of course, you can use tools like Google Analytics for data that can help you prioritize next steps). When evaluating pages, think about the purpose of the page or set of pages, and create an approach to making those deliver on their promise.

Optimize Every Page: Do the same for the second- and third-tier types of pages on your site until the entire site has been evaluated, and action items have been assigned to each tier and type of page.

The great thing about Panda overall is that it’s elevating the quality of the search results on Google. And, websites can see improvements in ranking when the algorithm refreshes after they’ve taken steps to improve their content and user experience.

Ultimately, the changes you make to align your website content with Panda will catapult your website from just having content to having content that performs. I call this “content performance marketing.”

As search, content and experience are one in the same, keeping pace with algorithmic changes by understanding the “why” behind them helps us all align strategy, and better optimize and measure the performance of our content and the experience it creates.

Back in 2013, Google informed us that B2B buyers don’t contact suppliers directly until 57 percent of the purchase process was complete. That purchase process starts with search and continues with content.

Fast-forward to 2014: B2Bs are embracing content as a primary form of marketing, and they’re seeing stellar results from the organic search channel.

In this post, we’ll take a look at what B2Bs said at the head of the year about their content marketing, and what results B2Bs are seeing in Q3 with new research showing organic content is the B2B marketer’s greatest ally. Then, we’ll touch on how to prepare for what’s to come with content.

B2Bs Led With Content In 2014

Heading into 2014, 93 percent of B2B brands said they were involved in content marketing, according to Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) 2014 B2B Content Marketing report.

Of those B2Bs surveyed, 81 percent cited articles on their websites as the content marketing tactic of choice, while 76 percent cited blogs.

What do these tactics have in common? They’re all part of a brand’s organic search strategy, and they can all be optimized to boost results, and reach customers at the right moment with the right solution.

Many B2Bs already know this, which is why 79 percent said blogs were the most effective tactic, and 58 percent cited articles on their website were, according to the CMI survey.

Web traffic was the top metric that B2B marketers used to measure their content’s performance, the report said.

And it’s easy to see why. New research coming from BrightEdge in August shows organic search is the top driver of traffic and results for B2Bs, hands down.

B2Bs Are Gaining Traffic & Revenue With Content In Q3

Creating quality content for your website is one of the most effective ventures in your B2B content strategy to capture prospects at multiple stages within the conversion funnel.

According to BrightEdge data, the majority of traffic to B2B websites studied came from organic search, above and beyond the traffic coming from other channels such as paid search and social.

And the business services sector saw more benefit from the organic search channel than other industries studied like retail, hospitality and more. That demonstrates the B2B’s commitment to content as a tool for marketing.

Only 39 percent of B2Bs surveyed in the CMI report expected content to lead to direct sales, yet BrightEdge research shows content in the organic search channel is driving real revenue.

For B2Bs, the organic search revenue share was much higher than other sectors and proved to be more fruitful than other channels studied like paid search, display, email and social.

When you consider that the organic search channel has no direct costs for participation, and one must only factor in resources associated with creating and managing content, these stats become even more impressive.

How B2Bs Can Prepare For Content In 2015

We’re still in Q3, but many of us are already thinking and planning for what 2015 will bring. For B2Bs, content will continue to be a prime marketing weapon, and the organic search channel will remain a primary way to reach your target customer.

As Google cited in that post on the B2B digital evolution, those in the business services sector still face challenges:

It’s Marketing’s job to influence the 57 percent of the sale that occurs mostly on the web, before Sales contact, but three challenges – incomplete digital integration, ineffective content, and a poorly-optimized channel mix – are keeping marketers from growing mindshare and making the most of what they are getting already.

Organic content has the ability to be an effective aspect of your content marketing program, but you need several key components. Quality content, yes, but it needs to be fueled by strategy and data, and optimized so that your target audience finds it at the moment they need it (this is what Google calls the Zero Moment of Truth).

This post on how to succeed with content marketing in organic search details a roadmap on how to marry data and optimization to get the most from content for organic search.

And this recent post at Search Engine Land highlights what some of the top brands and search engines are saying about how to stay ahead in the coming year with content and SEO, which can go beyond just the traditional optimization methods we’re used to hearing about.

In sum, content for the organic search channel has staying power. It can build authority for your brand, and help B2Bs remain a relevant part of the customer’s purchase journey, which often starts with search.

As the research shows, B2Bs are embracing content for organic search, and seeing great results. What comes next is refining those strategies, and optimizing the content plan for maximum results in the coming year.

]]>http://marketingland.com/b2b-marketing-organic-content-weapon-choice-97108/feed1Winning At #RealTimeMarketing On Twitterhttp://marketingland.com/winning-realtimemarketing-twitter-92376
http://marketingland.com/winning-realtimemarketing-twitter-92376#commentsTue, 29 Jul 2014 12:59:38 +0000http://marketingland.com/?p=92376The World Cup was a great lesson for social media marketers, with leading brands like Adidas, Snickers and Orbitz brilliantly showcasing Twitter’s real-time marketing capabilities. Whether it’s being present in those significant moments across the globe, or driving engagement for marketing campaigns, Twitter has proven to be an essential way for brands to become a part […]

]]>The World Cup was a great lesson for social media marketers, with leading brands like Adidas, Snickers and Orbitz brilliantly showcasing Twitter’s real-time marketing capabilities.

Whether it’s being present in those significant moments across the globe, or driving engagement for marketing campaigns, Twitter has proven to be an essential way for brands to become a part of people’s lives.

Real-Time Conversations & Your Brand

In July, Twitter announced that there were 672 million tweets sent related to the 2014 World Cup. And that’s just one event. Consider the millions of events that define our world each day — from sporting events to world news to celebrity gossip, there’s rarely a significant occurrence that’s not being discussed on Twitter. And for many brands, the people having those conversations comprise your target market.

The trick? Joining the conversation in a relevant, thoughtful and meaningful way. Real-time marketing requires brands take a strategic approach to the types of moments they want to be a part of.

There’s often a multifaceted approach to how to do this on Twitter. One way is through thoughtful, planned campaigns that coincide with a major event. The other is through agility — reacting to trending topics. Let’s first look at becoming a part of those trending topics.

“Newsjacking” & Twitter

While not the most flattering term for the tactic that demonstrates a brand’s ability to be agile in social media, “newsjacking” has become a popular way for brands to become part of any trending conversation.

Recent examples include tweets by various brands weighing in on the news that LeBron James would return to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Take this one from Sherwin-Williams:

With newsjacking, brands must be agile, but they must also be discerning. As many have pointed out before, this tactic has the ability to go badly. Take this tweet by Cottonelle, spotted by Marketing Land’s Matt McGee, in response to the LeBron story:

LeBron James is returning to Cleveland. Lesson: Stick with what works, like Cottonelle TP and Flushable Wipes — Cottonelle (@cottonelle) July 11, 2014

To pull this tactic off effortlessly, you need the right tools and the right message. Don’t jump into conversations without first having a goal in mind, and ensure your brand has a message that’s not forced. Ask: Am I contributing something relevant and valuable? Does joining the conversation help me achieve my business goals?

Real-Time Marketing & Twitter

This year, Adidas demonstrated its leadership in real-time marketing on Twitter, becoming the most talked about brand on the social platform during the World Cup, “with over 1.6 million tweets, retweets and replies mentioning the brand,” according to this AdAge report.

Adidas’ success with real-time marketing was no accident. The sports retail brand, a major sponsor of the World Cup, successfully executed relevant messages consistently throughout the World Cup events on a global scale by being prepared for any potential outcome.

According to Adidas, its World Cup real-time campaign was the culmination of many, many months of planning. “We knew we were going to do something real-time, that isn’t completely brand new to us, but it is at this scale,” Tom Ramsden, brand marketing director for Adidas Football, was quoted as saying in AdAge.

Just one way Adidas prepped for the event was by collecting 1,000 images and 160 videos of more than 100 Adidas players ahead of time — for nearly a year — so Adidas could be ready to react with content, no matter what the outcome. AdAge reported that by December of last year, the company “had an hour-by-hour calendar of the full 32-day tournament, anticipating what might happen and developing content around it.”

In a play-by-play of how Adidas reacted to World Cup events in real time, beginning with the first match (France vs. Germany), AdAge showed just how prepared the brand was:

With five minutes to go in the match, Adidas’ Mr. Hughes tells the team three pieces of content are ready to go if Germany wins: a Hummels photo, a Vine video of his goal and a group shot in case another German player also scores.

After Germany completes its win, fresh Getty Images photos of Hummels and team members celebrating are tweeted from @adidasfootball, the global handle, as well as Germany’s @adidasfussball, with copy in German that translates to “checkmate.”

Twitter Tools For Real-Time Targeting

While Adidas demonstrated a campaign with much complexity, many brands can easily leverage simple tools and strategies to start small with real-time marketing on Twitter.

If your brand is still hesitating, you’re not alone. According to a 2013 study by Adobe, the complexity of the systems required to perform real-time marketing was amongst the biggest concern of brands surveyed.

Image Source: Adobe Real-Time Marketing Insights Study

And while the definition of real-time marketing in this particular study spanned channels beyond social and beyond just Twitter, many brands may not know simple ways they can begin real-time marketing via social.

Organically on Twitter, brands can get in on the conversation at any time by creating timely topical content, and using the appropriate hashtags with eye-catching media that’s proven to increase engagement on the social platform. This post on Twitter shows how brands become a part of event-driven conversations using Twitter tools.

On the advertising side, there are a few Twitter products that leading brands use time and again with much success for real-time marketing. This includes:

There are many other case studies over at Twitter that can inspire and inform brands just getting started with their real-time marketing strategy. View case studies by industry, company size, tactic, product or goal to find brands or goals similar to yours.

As a side note, don’t forget the synergy that can happen when utilizing both SEO and social tactics together for Twitter success, like keyword tracking. You can boost the return on your Twitter engagement and benefit your website. More on that in this post on taking Twitter campaigns to the next level (and check out how Tiny Prints used this strategy in this case study).

At Share14 this year in San Francisco, Twitter are speaking on content, search and social interplay and will be sharing some very compelling insights.

Becoming A Champion Of Real-Time Marketing

Becoming a champion of real-time marketing on Twitter is one part “tools” and one part “strategy.” Tools help brands listen to the conversation, respond and track engagement. And these tools don’t need to be overly sophisticated: start small, measure and repeat.

However, the marketing strategy is the real driver of what moments your brand can and should be a part of, and how those moments define your brand’s place in people’s lives.

As with any marketing plan, know the brand’s key messaging and who your target audience is. Thoughtful conversations start there.

]]>http://marketingland.com/winning-realtimemarketing-twitter-92376/feed1Going All Responsive Is Not Always “One Size Fits All” With Mobilehttp://marketingland.com/going-responsive-always-one-size-fits-mobile-88807
http://marketingland.com/going-responsive-always-one-size-fits-mobile-88807#commentsTue, 01 Jul 2014 13:29:26 +0000http://marketingland.com/?p=88807What if I told you that you could recover upwards of 200 percent in lost smartphone traffic by ensuring your site’s mobile experience was implemented well? Would you make your mobile configuration a top priority? New research coming from BrightEdge shows that brands with misconfigured mobile solutions are missing out on a big opportunity. We […]

]]>What if I told you that you could recover upwards of 200 percent in lost smartphone traffic by ensuring your site’s mobile experience was implemented well? Would you make your mobile configuration a top priority?

New research coming from BrightEdge shows that brands with misconfigured mobile solutions are missing out on a big opportunity.

We know that Google is putting mobile front and center with features and solutions that cater to what’s happening in real time. Increasingly, your customers are accessing your site via a mobile device.

Run a quick report in your Google Analytics; how many of your visitors are coming from mobile devices? How has that changed year-over-year?

2014 BrightEdge data featured in our Mobile Share Report shows that 27 percent of the websites studied wrongly implemented their mobile solutions, which yielded an average of 68 percent loss in smartphone traffic.

If these sites could recover the full potential of traffic coming from smartphone users, that would equal more than a 200-percent gain from that they are experiencing today.

So what gives? Why are sites losing in mobile? Two things are occurring:

The complexity of mobile configurations results in incorrectly implemented mobile solutions that could create a poor experience for mobile users.

Google wants to serve mobile search results with sites that are creating the best mobile experience, and will rank as such.

As many know, click-through rates are highly sensitive to rank, which can result in direct traffic loss.

Image source – BrightEdge Mobile Share Report

Add to that the fact that mobile search results are rapidly distinguishing themselves from desktop search results, and the potential for more or less mobile traffic (depending on the quality of the mobile experience) is huge.

In fact, BrightEdge research found 62 percent of organic searches show different results depending on whether the search was performed on a desktop or smartphone.

The propensity for different mobile configurations to have more complex implementation rules is one of the reasons Google recommends responsive design as the best mobile solution: it’s less complicated to do well.

However, increasingly, we are finding that brands are using more than one solution for their site, as they feel one mobile configuration is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

All Smartphone Rankings Are Created Equal

When brands started going mobile a few years back, it was still unclear what the best approach was: separate mobile URLs, dynamic serving or responsive. After all, Google says it supports all three configurations.

As a refresher, here is a brief explanation of the types of configurations available and supported:

Responsive Web Design: This is when a website serves the same URL and same HTML (aka content) to all devices, using CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device.

Dynamic Serving: This is when websites serve the same set of URLs to all devices, but the HTML and CSS change depending on the device (in other words, the content is different, the URL is the same).

Separate Mobile Sites: This is when a website has a separate mobile experience from its desktop version, and the URLs are different. This can be applied to an entire site or specific pages within a site.

In 2012, Google gave its official recommendation: responsive web design was its pick for a mobile solution. So, does that mean Google favors sites that have implemented responsive design over other types of mobile configurations?

The answer is “no” — at least, that’s what we’re seeing in this latest data. We analyzed billions of keywords through BrightEdge’s Data Cube and found that for a given keyword, a website’s rank for smartphone users varies only slightly based on the type of mobile configuration a website has implemented.

That’s good news for mobile websites.

However, Not All Mobile Configurations Are Created Equal

While smartphone rankings vary only slightly depending on the type of configuration implemented, when it comes to the complexity of implementation and the tendency for errors, not all mobile configurations are created equal.

As stated earlier, responsive tends to have fewer complications that would lead to a poor user experience on a mobile device. One of the only things to watch for with responsive web design is the load time of unnecessary assets. That’s why many pursue conditional loading when implementing responsive design.

When it comes to the type of mobile configuration with the most complications, separate mobile URLs tended to have the highest error rate at 72 percent:

BrightEdge found the most common errors amongst separate mobile URLs tend to be:

No Alternate Tag: 61 percent

No HTTP Vary Header: 41 percent

Wrong Canonical Tag: 35 percent

No Canonical Tag: 35 percent

Wrong Alternate Tag: 2 percent

Disallow Robots: 16 percent

Faulty Redirects to Home Page: 12 percent

Many of these are addressed in Google’s help documentation, where developers can go to get more information on how to remedy these types of errors.

With dynamic serving, the most common error (at 82 percent) was with the HTTP Vary header, and not indicating the content should be different for each “user-agent” (for example, smartphone users).

This error could result in what’s reminiscent of Black Hat cloaking techniques, and webmasters should ensure their sites are not associated with that tactic.

One Mobile Configuration: One Size Fits All?

Sites that have already taken a mobile approach are ahead of the game. Sites that have implemented it well are winning. And, sites that are exploring a hybrid approach are innovating at the mobile level.

Some brands have decided to implement more than one configuration to further personalize the mobile experience for visitors. For example, a site may choose to use responsive design overall, but selectively choose dynamic serving for a site’s most critical landing pages.

These types of choices could be the next big move in mobile. But brands need to continue to be cautious with implementation in this next wave of mobile innovation; deploying one configuration can be complicated enough, and layering different approaches has the potential to compound errors.

We all want a clean bill of health when it comes to the mobile experience for our users. Going with Google’s recommendation of responsive design could be the safest route, but it doesn’t always create the brand experience you might be looking for.

Trying different mobile solutions on for size can be costly, but if you know what to watch for, you can ultimately come out on top.

]]>http://marketingland.com/going-responsive-always-one-size-fits-mobile-88807/feed2Optimize LinkedIn Like A Pro To Boost Your Personal Brandhttp://marketingland.com/optimize-linkedin-like-pro-boost-personal-brand-85002
http://marketingland.com/optimize-linkedin-like-pro-boost-personal-brand-85002#commentsTue, 03 Jun 2014 14:20:39 +0000http://marketingland.com/?p=85002As a professional marketer, you have a story to tell about your background and experience, your skills and interests, and what you can add to the conversation in your area of expertise. Together, these pieces of the story paint a picture of your personal brand — a brand you create and grow over time as […]

]]>As a professional marketer, you have a story to tell about your background and experience, your skills and interests, and what you can add to the conversation in your area of expertise. Together, these pieces of the story paint a picture of your personal brand — a brand you create and grow over time as you move forward in your career whether you lead companies or join them.

Today, one of the most viable places to tell that story online is LinkedIn. With more than 259 million members, professionals of all levels are connecting, sharing content and finding new business opportunities each day.

Carving out time to optimize your presence on LinkedIn can lead you to become more discoverable in the search results and can help you stay top of mind when others are looking for professionals just like you to do business with.

Earlier this month, I talked about what it takes for marketers to succeed today, and in this post, I’d like to share some tips on how to demonstrate the attributes of a successful marketer through your personal brand on LinkedIn.

Your Profile, Your Brand, Your Search Results

Think of your LinkedIn profile as your own mini website all about you, the brand. There, you can showcase your success, interests and endorsements through content, both text and visual.

Just as you would optimize the foundations of your website before you start an aggressive inbound marketing campaign, do the same for your LinkedIn presence, starting with your profile. There are very clear and direct benefits to having a more complete profile, one of which is more visibility in the LinkedIn search results.

While there is “no single rank” for LinkedIn search – meaning that rankings are personalized for each searcher – users with more complete profiles can show up higher in the LinkedIn search results. “Even though a query will return the same results for everyone, the order is determined in part by the profile, activity, and connections of the person searching.”

The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn breaks down how LinkedIn search works in terms of keywords, relevance and connections. One thing they note over and over again is the importance of “profile completeness,” as you can see below.

(Note that on No. 2, it says keywords in your name help you rank higher; however, you’re technically only supposed to have your name in your name’s field, as anything else is a violation of LinkedIn’s terms.)

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

If your profile isn’t as robust as it could be, you’ll see a notification about your profile strength on the right side of your profile, with recommendations on how to improve it. This includes:

Having a photo

Adding your professional experience

Listing at least five skills

Writing a summary

Citing your industry and postal code

Filling in your education background

Having at least 50 connections.

To start taking control of your personal brand on LinkedIn, spend time cultivating the following:

Your Public Profile Settings

Your profile is searchable on the web, and can show up in the search results in the major search engines like Google when someone searches for your name. You choose what information on LinkedIn can be shown to the public by using the settings available to you. Here’s a screenshot of the options:

If you’re having trouble with your LinkedIn profile showing up in the search engine results, LinkedIn gives some tips here:

Choose “Make my public profile visible to everyone” in your public profile settings.

Invite and connect with at least 1 connection.

Supplement your profile with additional sections and information.

Update your profile regularly to keep it current.

You’ll also want to consider a public profile URL . This is a vanity URL that you can use as a branding tool and share in places like your email signature, your business card and more. (These URLs are available on a first come, first served basis.)

Your Headline, Summary & Experience

Did you know 94 percent of recruiters are on LinkedIn, but only 36 percent of job seekers are? This is according to findings published by Jobvite in 2014.

So, if you’re looking to land your next professional opportunity through LinkedIn, the headline, summary and experience areas are a priority for developing — especially when it comes to including keywords that are relevant to your skills and experience. Pay special attention to what keywords you include here.

Use keywords throughout this section that you believe people would be searching for when looking for a professional such as yourself. Or, use the space to get out an important message, like I did in my headline, as pictured above.

The headline (and vanity URL) also show in the search engine result snippet:

Nate Kievman at Linked Strategies gives solid, hands-on tactical tips for discovering how to optimize your profile for LinkedIn search with the right keywords and frequency here.

Recommendations and endorsements go a long way toward demonstrating your personal brand in action. You can take control of those sections by actively soliciting recommendations from colleagues or clients, and by managing skills and endorsement to your preferences.

Marketing Your Personal Brand On LinkedIn

Now that you have the foundations of your profile optimized, it’s time to start inbound marketing within LinkedIn. Just like other places on the web, content is king in the professional social network, and building authority and connections starts with creating and sharing not only your own content, but others’ as well.

According to a study by LinkedIn that examined content shared by professionals on varying platforms, 74 percent of respondents stated that LinkedIn offers content relevant to their career and professional interests.

Data in the survey give vital clues on the types of content the general audience is looking for on LinkedIn, which builds a case for not only having a strong personal brand, but taking the time to create useful, quality content that you can share on LinkedIn, like your blog posts, for example.

Here are just a few ways you can take advantage of LinkedIn’s features to build authority for your personal brand through your content and engagement:

Take the time to learn about Pulse, LinkedIn’s content curation service, and how it works , so your content can be visible there – and so you can get the content that’s most relevant to you.

Leverage the most ROI from the content you publish on LinkedIn by optimizing how you post updates. LinkedIn gives 15 tips here on how to create the most compelling posts.

Understand the connection between a robust LinkedIn presence and the ability to be an influencer on LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn research, the average influencer post receives 30,000 views.

Take advantage of long-form posts on LinkedIn to further expand your content reach and personal brand’s authority.

Create or join a group on LinkedIn that is relevant to your profession. Join conversations, engage with others’ content, share your own content and trade ideas. LinkedIn, after all, is a social network. The most value can be realized when you take the time to network.

]]>http://marketingland.com/optimize-linkedin-like-pro-boost-personal-brand-85002/feed0How To Prepare For MoCo: Mobile, Content & Advanced SEOhttp://marketingland.com/moco-mobile-content-advanced-seo-84083
http://marketingland.com/moco-mobile-content-advanced-seo-84083#commentsTue, 20 May 2014 13:38:50 +0000http://marketingland.com/?p=84083What does it mean to be “mobile ready”? You might say having a mobile responsive site — and that’s certainly part of it. But there’s much more that goes into ultimately creating an excellent website experience for your ever-expanding and ever-discerning mobile user base. It’s a fact that people are starting to use smartphones as […]

]]>What does it mean to be “mobile ready”? You might say having a mobile responsive site — and that’s certainly part of it. But there’s much more that goes into ultimately creating an excellent website experience for your ever-expanding and ever-discerning mobile user base.

It’s a fact that people are starting to use smartphones as the go-to device. According to Google’s 2013 Mobile Search Moments study, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or work, even when a PC is likely nearby.

We know that smartphones are often used as a multitasking accessory to other devices as well, with 82% using them alongside other forms of media, according to Google’s Our Mobile Planet report.

Even though Mobile Search Moments data showed only 17% made purchases on their mobile phone, mobile does make an impact — 28% of mobile searches were found to result in a conversion (e.g., store visit, call, purchase), while 73% triggered an additional action of some sort, such as visiting a retailer’s website.

Data coming from BrightEdge’s mobile share report in 2013 showed mobile conversions at about one-third the rate of desktop, leaving a massive opportunity for sites to grab more of that share versus desktop.

With more mobile-optimized sites coming to fruition on the web, conversions via mobile devices will likely see a jump in the next few years.

The opportunity is growing. In many countries, access to the web via a smartphone outpaces PCs by leaps and bounds. eMarketer forecast more than 2.23 billion people worldwide (nearly half of all mobile phone users) will go online via a mobile device at least monthly in 2014, “and over half of the mobile audience will use the mobile internet next year.”

These are just a handful of the stats we see emerging, and they serve as more than ample proof that the time is now to make websites mobile ready.

Google led the charge in making mobile search a priority when it unleashed its infrastructure update, Hummingbird, which prepped the search engine for returning more relevant results in the next era of how people search: conversationally and on mobile phones.

Google is now ready to reward those sites in the search results that are prepared to offer great mobile search experiences. Will you be among them?

The Mobile User’s Appetite For Content

So we know that mobile users are spending time online, but what’s on the menu? Consider these numbers: 6 percent, 25 percent and 40 percent. Those are data points Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, gave at PubCon in 2013 that represent the percentage of mobile phone traffic to YouTube in 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively.

We know video content represents a huge portion of what people consume online from mobile devices. At BrightEdge, we’ve seen leading brands obtain huge wins when they optimize their mobile experience with videos and imagery.

The appetite for visual content is only expected to grow. Google cites Gen C (“C” referencing “connected,” with 65% under the age of 35) as a growing population of YouTube consumers. “Thirty-eight percent of these people turn to their phone first when they want to be entertained,” Google said.

Millennials fall into the under-35 category, as well, and stats coming from comScore support the idea these content consumers will continue to be an important segment, with 18% of 18- to 34-year-olds being mobile-only users as of November 2013.

If that’s not enough to make you take a close look at your visual mobile content, the BrightEdge mobile share study found a strong correlation in conversions and the use of video and multimedia content in the media and entertainment, travel and hospitality and e-commerce industries.

Apps are also a big focus for mobile content consumers. In the Our Mobile Planet report by Google, stats show 83% of smartphone users visit social networks on their phones, and more than half do that at least once per day.

Recent research by comScore (January 2014) showed Facebook, Instagram and Twitter among the Top 15 apps accessed by smartphone users, with Facebook in the No. 1 spot.

What Do Mobile Users Want In A Website?

Before embarking on your mobile journey, craft your strategy by putting yourself in the mobile user’s shoes. Undoubtedly, different sites have a varying purpose, and a different set of expectations by users — think e-commerce versus a local brick-and-mortar store, or the travel and hospitality industry versus the B2B sector.

As with all web marketing, there are best practice foundations to build upon, and the rest is up to the informed marketing strategist to figure out. Your job is to uncover which type design approach is best, what content resonates most and how to make the navigation effortless.

If you want your users to be able to take a desired action (which is symbiotic with your site’s goals), work to understand what they are trying to accomplish on the mobile version of your site versus the PC version, and design accordingly.

Common mobile-only site features include store locators and click-to-call buttons; but, it goes much deeper into how the navigation is set up for mobile usability. Google partnered with AnswerLab to conducted a research study on how users interact with mobile sites, the results of which they released in April 2014. The report, Principles of Mobile Site Design: Delight Users and Drive Conversions, gave clues to what mobile users are looking for when they visit a site.

A key takeaway from the research concluded the following:

[M]obile users tend to be very goal-oriented — they expect to be able to get what they need from a mobile site easily, immediately, and on their own terms. Ensure success by designing with their context and needs in mind without sacrificing richness of content.

Based on the study’s findings, Google recommended the following mobile design best practices:

Keep Calls-To-Action Visible. Also consider how the call-to-action differs for the mobile audience versus a desktop audience.

Keep Navigation Menus Concise. Work with as few navigational menu items as possible, keeping just the categories that would be most important to the mobile audience.

Make Finding The Home Page Simple. Keep in mind that participants of the Google study expected the logo at the top of the screen to take them back to the home page.

Don’t Let Promotions Overwhelm The Experience. “Participants visiting one company’s mobile site were distracted by a large promotional banner and missed the navigational buttons beneath,” Google pointed out in its report. Don’t be that website.

SEO, Content & User Experience

SEOs who lead with the user experience in mind win in the mobile search world. Google announced back in 2013 that common mistakes sites make in their attempt to create mobile websites can affect their rankings in the search results.

“Avoiding these mistakes helps your smartphone users engage with your site fully and helps searchers find what they’re looking for faster,” Google said in its announcement. “To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.”

But it hasn’t been simple for brands to figure out the best route for their mobile websites. Since mobile became a topic of discussion a few years back, site owners have been scrambling to make their sites mobile ready. Without clear direction on which design route was the best to take (mobile-only sites versus responsive Web design), this led to mixed results.

Google took an official stance on which type of design approach it recommended in 2012. No doubt armed with research on the multi-screen world we live in, Google said responsive web design was the mobile-ready approach of choice.

While there have been discussions around whether or not responsive design can harm SEO, Google’s official stance is that there is no disadvantage to SEO with responsive web design.

The Mobile Discovery Checklist

Here are a few things to consider when approaching your mobile-ready strategy:

Website design — will you go with Google’s recommendation of responsive web design? If so, why? If not, why?

What sort of smartphone-only features will you implement? Click-to-call? Store locators? Mobile-only offers?

What elements would be the most critical to keep in your site’s navigation for a mobile audience and why?

What are people searching for on your site? Does your site do a good job of delivering it? Are you segmenting the mobile traffic to get a clear picture of this?

Are you considering graphics and video as part of your mobile content strategy? How can you convert the content you have today to make it more mobile-friendly for users accessing the site from a smartphone or tablet?

In conclusion, brands and their marketers need to harness the resources available to them to create mobile-friendly, mobile-optimized sites now — not a year from now, not even six months from now.

Ignoring the trends we’re seeing will only give your competition a chance to surpass you in the mobile space. Once you’ve made improvements to your site, don’t stop there. Make sure you’re tracking and measuring the impact mobile is having over time, and what users respond to, so you can usher your site into the new era of usability for many years to come.

At SMX advanced on June 11th, I will be sharing some further insights and very interesting data on Advanced Mobile SEO, ranking and mobile site strategy.